Technology CEOs are more optimistic and confident in this year’s CEO Survey, but they have some challenges as well, including improving their ability to innovate and dealing with cyber threats. They’re focused on changes in R&D and innovation, but customer growth and retention as well as talent strategies remain priorities too.

Confidence is on the rise.Technology CEOs are more optimistic about the global economy compared to last year. And they are more optimistic compared to their peers. 90% of technology CEOs are bullish when it comes to revenue growth in the next year and their optimism extends three years out to 2017.

When it comes to growth, confidence in established markets has rebounded. However looking three to five years out, they view Mexico and Indonesia as important growth markets beyond the BRICs.

Hiring is expected to increase. 62% of technology CEOs plan to increase hiring compared to 50% of the total sample.

Technological advances accelerate business transformation. 90% of technology CEOs agree that technological advances continue to be the principal catalyst driving business change. In their organisations, customer growth and retention, talent, and innovation are the top areas they target for change.

Strategic alliances and cross-border M&A receive renewed interest. 48% of CEOs entered into a new strategic alliance in the past 12 months, up from 32% last year, and 28% were involved in cross-border M&A compared to 18% in 2012. Of note is they are broadening their focus beyond North America and Europe, placing emphasis on East and South Asia.

Technology CEOs are dissatisfied with their company’s speed of change. 60% of technology CEOs are concerned about the speed of technological change. They view innovation as the key to addressing this challenge so many place a major emphasis on improving innovation in their organisations. But whilst they have plans, just one third have started or completed programmes to make their companies more innovative.

Cyber threats rise to one of the top five business threats.
Over half of technology respondents (56%) view cyber threats as a significant growth risk. Availability of key skills and intellectual property protection also remain in the top five (68% and 57% respectively).

Compared to previous years, more technology CEOs are worried about government protectionist tendencies and exchange rate volatility (55% and 67% respectively).

Technological advances will transform technology businesses the most over the next five years

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CEO interview quotes

"There is the notion of the ‛Internet of everything,’ where all things around us will be connected—the phone will sit at the center of that. There will be sensors in the environment around us, sensors on our bodies; we’ll have wearable devices, both for measuring us and for giving us feedback. These will interface into the phone. The net effect will be this merging, blurring of cyberspace and real space, because the phone is giving you access, telling you what content, services, and people are around you that you can interact with."

"One of the key fundamental cultural changes is moving away from incremental innovation to more disruptive innovation. First of all, going about that change requires you to be global in terms of your footprint. Some of the best ideas around disruptive innovation come from other parts of the world, be they in India; or Waterloo, Canada; or Israel; and even right here in the US. You have to have a connected engineering workforce, which has the license to be disruptive. And you give your team time to think creatively, to have the remit to believe that they have the opportunity to be disruptive. For us, it’s about culture as well, what kind of an environment are we serving up to our teams?"

"Because it’s not just engineers. I want people working on mundane processes to be disruptive. Quote-to-cash (the sales process management), some might argue, is a mundane process enterprise-wide, but I would argue that you can be disruptive in thinking about how you handle that long-term, and I want every employee to feel empowered to think that way."

"One of the biggest issues to overcome when you’re looking to innovate your culture is the issue of incumbency. Incumbency can be a dangerous, comfortable place when you are so used to doing things in a routinized way that has led to success in the past. When you are the incumbent vendor, you begin to get more comfortable with your customers. Rooting out that issue requires you to lead your team to help them understand that’s dangerous"

"Cyber security is one of those future trends to watch very carefully in tech. The more flexible, adaptive, and easy to use that technology gets, the more susceptible it is for error and security issues."